Searching for Group Policy Objects with the GPMC

As your Active Directory grows, so will your use of GPOs. However, sometimes remembering the one GPO that you used to do some magic a while ago can be difficult. To that end, the GPMC has some basic searching functionality.

With the search feature, you can search for GPOs with any (and all) of the following characteristics:

• Display name (that is, friendly name )

• GUID

• Permissions on the GPO itself

• A link, if it exists (used in conjunction with the name, and so on)

• WMI filters used

• Specific client-side-extensions if they were used for either the user or computer side

To search for a GPO that matches the characteristics you're after, right-click the domain and choose Search. In the Search Item dialog box, enter your criteria in the condition fields. The Value field will change based on the Search Item field. In Figure 2.29 I'm searching corp.com for all GPOs with the word Hide in the name.

Note 

The one thing this search engine cannot do is to poke through the each and every GPO to see where you enabled some policy setting.